Hi, I'm a Cupcake and this is my first fic in a looooong time, it's also my first in English and my first AU so I'm sorry for any mistakes or problems :v

I don't know what to say here :v I had this idea some time ago and I started to read a lot of Marvel comics and I love MarAce so why the hell shouldn't I write it, right? This first chapter is more to present the general settings and to see if you people like the idea or not o-o I hope you do, cause I have a lot of ideas for this story. So this will mostly likely be a long story, but I still have no idea of how many chapters o-o

And now to the chapter /o-o/

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece nor its characters. If I did, I wouldn't be posting this story as a fanfic.

Chapter 01

The youngster yawned, lazily looking up to the clouds adorning the summer sky. The summer morning sky. He reminded himself, making a mental note to kill his brother for waking him up before lunch in their first day of summer vacation. He couldn't care less about the rich kids party or rebel rich kids party or weird job or girlfriend or whatever was his excuse – this time – to stay out until way too late to be able to go to the market the next morning. Honestly, if it wasn't for their little brother whining about how hungry he was and how they didn't have any meat, he would just give a big fuck you to his dear brother.

But he couldn't say 'no' to his baby brother.

So, there he was, walking down the street, going back to his house from the market. He shifted the bags in his hands, trying to balance the weight in each one of them. They weren't very heavy, despite the way too big amount of meat he had had to buy in order to feed him and his brothers, and he was pretty strong for someone his age, but that didn't mean he couldn't try to make thinks more comfortable to him. At least, it was a nice day for a walk outside. Some people might say it was too hot to go outside a room with air-conditioner, but the teenager never was really bothered by the heat – another excuse for his brother to send him to this little trip, instead of going himself.

The day was also calm. He imagined it was the kind of day that made some of the oldest people in town to remember how it was before. Raftel was said to be the best place to live in Earth, even if it was just a small town at the time, known only by the All Blue Street, paradise for any lover of food. People were happy, there were almost no crimes, death used to be mostly because of old age or sickness, and even the later were rare, because the hospitals were always fast to start any treatment. He snorted at the thought. It was probably just a bunch of bullshit created by nostalgic ageing minds. Whatever, it certainly was a lot better than nowadays with all the-

"Hey, have you heard about last night?"

A voice nearby interrupted his line of thoughts.

"You mean that conflict between Yaksha and the authorities? Is it true that the Revolutionaries were also involved?"

"Yes. People are saying that young lad was there too... what was his name...?"

The teenager decided to shut off the strangers' voices and keep going his way, already knowing what it was about. It was always about the same thing. The thing that made the peaceful Raftel in that big mess that is now called Grand Line: supervillains and superheroes. It can sound ridiculous or out of a comic book or something, but it was the truth. Nobody knew exactly when people started developing powers or how they started to organize themselves between the two sides, but nowadays it was common enough to make the teenager simply never want to listen anything about the matter ever again. Finally arriving at home, he opened his front door. He was just happy that his Gramps wasn't at home and he wouldn't have to go through the old man grumbles of whatever happened last night and how those heroes had to know to clean their own mess. Even if most of the mess had probably been made by the old man himself.

"I'm ba-"

"ACE!"

"-aaaack!"

Before he could finish his sentence or even get inside per say, he was already being tackled and almost sent flying – or at least to the floor, on his butt – by the hyperactive rubber idiot he called brother. He couldn't help but only sigh and smile at his little brother, with his arms and legs wrapped a couple of times around the older body, that was talking non stopping. Oh, and close the door before any outsider could see the limbs wrapped a couple of times part.

"Ne, ne, Ace. How it went? Something interesting happened? Did you go on an adventure? You bought meat, right? I'm hungry! When breakfast'll be ready? Can we eat the meat for breakfast?"

"Hey, Lu. It was normal. No. Less than half an hour is not enough for an adventure. Yes, I bought meat. I know. If you unwrap yourself from me, soon. And, for the last time, no, you can't eat meat for breakfast." Ace answered with a patience that surprisingly enough came with years of practice and that he only had – until a certain point – to his little brother. Well, maybe a little of this 'patience' was also just 'routine', since the younger one acted like that every time someone arrived home while he was awake. Luckily, this also meant Luffy unwrapped from him fast. Although, this probably had more to do with the prospective of getting food faster too.

"Eeeeeeeh, why can't I eat meat?" Luffy pouted, catching Ace's attention back after he put the shopping bags at the kitchen table. The oldest's eyes immediately end on the scar in his left cheek, choosing to ignore the question. There was no point in trying to explain things to Luffy and that scar was something that always bothered him, because he had no idea of how his baby brother got hurt. Luffy having those rubber powers only made everything a lot worse.

Truth be told, the fifteen years old was the mainly reason Ace had to hate the superhero talk. His powers meant he had to choose a side in the constant battle between the good and the evil. According to Gramps, he had to choose the good side and become a hero align with the Marineford – the Grand Line version of the Justice League, or some crap like that. According to Ace, he should just try to keep neutral and hidden and completely out of harms way – the older brother knew in which kind of situation the younger one was and thinking of what could happen with his baby brother if he chose a side was terrifying. His other brother just tried to stay away from this kind of discussions for whatever reason.

Talking about his other brother.

"Where's Sabo?" the sudden question made the young one stop pouting and look to his big brother with big black eyes. Ace chuckled at his antics when the boy tilted his head to the side, thinking way too hard to answer a simple question.

"He's in his room!" Luffy finally answered, feeling proud of himself for remembering, while Ace went to put some of the groceries in the fridge before they forgot to do it and the food started to spoil (because that had already happened, more than one time, before). "After he wake you up, he said he was too tired because of the party or study group or something yesterday and he needed more sleep. So, he went back to bed." The younger teen finished with a huge smile.

Ace stopped what he was doing when he heard the words 'went back to bed'. And because of a party he'd decided to go to alone.

"Oh, really?"

"Yep." The son of a bitch "Neeee, Aceee, I reeeeeeeeally can't get any meat?"

The worst part was that the son of a bitch didn't even have the decency to feel offended when called a son of a bitch.

"Neeeeee, Aaaaaaaaaaceeeeeeeeee."

He needed a way to get revenge on Sabo for making him wake way too early in the morning for a summer vacation day.

"Aaaaceeeeeeee. Are you listening?"

But how?

*chomp*

"Ouch! Wha- Luffy?" he jumped in surprised, looking down to the messy mop of black hair on his shoulder "Did you just bite me?"

"You weren't answering me!" Ace couldn't believe that. He wasn't answering so Luffy just decided he had to bite him?

"What the- ? Are you crazy? What if I had burnt you by accident?" Ace asked, practically pushing his brother away from him.

Yeah, this was another problem about the whole good against evil situation. He had powers of his own too, and powers a lot more powerful and dangerous than those of Luffy. This of course made things extremely more complicated for him – like he needed more complicated stuff in his life – and for a moment, when they'd discovered this, he was sure Gramps was having a heart attack. When it was about himself, Ace honestly couldn't care less if he get hurt or if people talk bad about him, he simply hated the idea of having to choose a side. It was ridiculous and he hated to be forced into doing stuff because other people ordered him to. He was free to do whatever he wanted with his life.

"It's okay! I know Ace'd never hurt me!" Luffy answered, with a huge grin, to his brother's exacerbation like it was nothing. Seriously, sometimes Luffy's inability to realize the severity of the situation still made Ace surprised, and extremely worried his baby brother would get into even more trouble because of that. Again.

Although... At that moment this could be something good. Ace did need something to get revenge at Sabo and he knew their brother could be even softer with Luffy than he was. Now he just needed to decide if he really wanted to use his cute little brother's naivety for the good of his own quest for vengeance or not. A quick look to the clock and Luffy starting to whine again because he wanted to eat meat for breakfast and he was taking too long were enough to make him decide. He probably wouldn't have any real problem living with the guilt anyway.

"I think Sabo has some meat to give you, Lu" this get the attention of the younger brother " Why don't you go try to wake him up and-" Ace didn't even needed to finish the sentence, because Luffy was already going up the stars to their brother's room. "He needs to be happy, so you should also tickle him to make him laugh!" he decided to suggest from the kitchen door, before going back to organizing the rest of the groceries and starting to make breakfast. He was also pretty hungry already, so more reasons to just do it.

He started putting some slices of bread on the toaster, before taking some bacon and eggs from the fridge. Of course Ace still remembered how Sabo, Gramps, Makino, Dadan, Dogra, Magra, Sanji, Nami, Vivi, Usopp, Law, Franky, Brook, basically all his friends, Sanji's dad, the rest of Dadan's family, his Home Economy teacher, some of Gramps co-workers, some of the neighbours, the city fire-fighters, a guy that tried to rob them once and sometimes even Luffy told him to stay away from the stove. They had even put a note on it telling Ace to stay away in case he ever forgot. But the superpowered teenager decided eggs and bacon were simple enough to make without burning them. Or the rest of the kitchen. Or exploding the whole house.

"SABO! WAKE UP! MEAT!"

"L-lu-luffy! W-what are you.. Haha.. Stop it!" luckily, the sounds of shouts and laughing coming from the second floor of their house started before Ace could get a frying pan, his plan have worked just fine. "Imma.. I'm awake... I'M AWAKE!" the oldest of the three brothers smiled to himself, barely holding back his own laughing while imagining exactly what was happening inside one of the bedrooms: Luffy'd got there with all the delicacy of a raging bull, had jumped on top of a sleeping Sabo with all the consideration he never had for others and now was attacking the sin of a bitch with a barrage of tickles and demanding meat at the same time. The last part pretty obvious for the entire neighbourhood.

Oh yeah. He wasn't going to feel any guilt for using his baby brother to get revenge on Sabo at all.

Now, back to eggs and bacon, while Sabo was dealing with a hungry Luffy. It would be worse for everybody if they got back in the kitchen without any food to be offered to the rubber boy. So, first things first, he needed a frying pan. Frying pan positioned on top of the stove, he only needed to turn on the fire and put the eggs and bacon in it, right? That's just what he did. But maybe he should've used a bigger frying pan? Too late for that. He just took a spoon and started to mix the eggs and the bacon and they're not really looking like what they're supposed to look like. Of course, they're not! Ace had completely forgot about how he had to put butter or kitchen oil or something on the frying pan first. Whistling some old sailor song, Ace took the bottle of oil that was nearer and poured it above the contents of the frying pan. He wasn't completely sure of how much of it he should put, so he decided to put a little more just in case.

Suddenly, he started to feel his consciousness drifting away from him.

"ACE IS DOING WHAT?"

Sabo's shout was the last thing he heard before his narcolepsy kicked him and he collapsed.

When Ace woke up again some time later, the first thing he noticed was that he was covered in fire extinguisher foam. Getting up, he noticed his clothes were all burnt and he definitely needed to buy new ones soon. Looking around, the kitchen was also partly burnt, especially the area around the stove. The fire extinguisher was lying against the opposite wall, near the door. Finally, his brothers and Gramps were sitting on the table eating a breakfast composed of stuff that they could warm up on the microwave or that they could simply eat cold. His culinary experiment was nowhere to be found. Oh, and apparently the old man had arrived home at some moment.

Garp, obviously, was the first one to notice his older grandson had woken up. The man didn't even give time to the boy to completely recover his senses to explain himself before hitting him with one of his infamous Fists of Love. Actually, two, just to be sure.

"Ouch! What was that for, old man?" Ace asked, rubbing the new bumps on his head.

"Ace! How many times we have to tell you to not try to cook anything?" his grandfather asked in a way Ace wasn't going to admit out loud that was intimidating "You'll never be able to be a good hero if you keep destroying your own house like that!"

"I am NOT becoming a hero, Gramps" the teenager felt like a little kid throwing a tantrum, having already had this discussion a thousand times before. But he really couldn't find the will to care. "NO, this does NOT mean I'm going to be a villain!" he added, already knowing what Gramps was going to say next.

"Idiot!" Garp shouted, punching Ace the third time that morning "Listen to me, Ace. In this world if people like you or Luffy don't become heroes, they're villains! And I'm not raising two villains, so be a good example to your brother and become a hero!"

"Eeeh? But I don't want to be a hero!" Luffy pouted from behind his plate of meat – Sabo really couldn't say no to him, could he? – "If I was a hero and I had a lot of meat, I'd have to share it with everybody! And I want all the meat for myself!"

Ace wanted to facepalm after this explanation, completely understanding and for once not yelling at Gramps for punching Luffy. Well, right, a part of him totally agreed with what the rubber brain had said, but still. Meat was not a good reason for him to decide anything. But really that was the way Luffy's mind worked.

"That's it! You three are coming with me to work tonight!" Garp decided, not giving room for arguments.

"WHAT?" the three shouted at the same time. Obviously, it wouldn't stop the boys from complaining.

"Wait, Garp-san! Why I have to go too?" Sabo asked, still holding his spoon halfway through his cereal bowl and his mouth. The guy was seriously only trying to save his own ass?

"Ne, Saaaabooo, I also don't wanna go! Grandpa, why I have to goo?" Luffy practically whimpered, obviously terrified of the idea of spending the whole night with Garp. Okay, Ace could understand this perfectly. He felt the same, just wasn't showing.

"What good would this even do?" he asked, trying to convince Garp it was a bad idea. It wouldn't be the first time he dragged them along and the other times hadn't made any difference in the brothers' opinion. Not that he had any real hope on this plan. Luffy definitively had inherited his stubbornness from the man.

"It will be great for you boys to learn the difference between good and evil" none of them pointed they already knew this difference. Well, Ace and Sabo knew the difference. Luffy's mind and understanding of the world remained a mystery to them. "And I know you three don't have anything else to do tonight!"

"WE DO!" come the collective answer.

"Oh yeah? What?"

Fuck.

The rest of the day was spent with the three brothers running after anything to do. Ace never hated anything as much as he hated their tradition of not really doing anything during their first day of vacations. The worse part was that all of their friends also knew about this tradition and all made plans to do something that didn't include the brothers. To make matters even worse, Luffy managed to disappear from Garp's radar after a call from Usopp and Sabo managed to make plans with some mysterious lady friend of his (which obviously resulted in a lot of teasing from Ace's part).

By the time afternoon came, Ace was pretty much hopeless. He tried to call everyone he could think of and every one of them were busy with something: Zoro was at some summer training camp; Sanji was helping with the preparations to the new branch of the Baratie; Nami and Nojiko were outside the town on a trip; same to Vivi; and Brook; Law was a sadistic bastard that just laughed of his despair; Usopp, Chopper and Franky were busy hanging out with Luffy already. Ace considered joining them, but the two of them on the same place would be too risky and easy for Gramps to follow. Dadan's place was also a no go, those guys would just hand him over to Garp the moment the man put his feet in there. He even tried that Haruta girl he met once the day of his college entrance exam, but she had some 'family business' to deal with.

Maybe he should just jump out the window and go hang out alone anywhere. Yeah, that seemed like a plan.

"Ace, are you ready to go?" unfortunately, the moment he was opening said window was also the moment Garp decided to go get him in his room for them to go. Or rather, the moment Garp went to drag a struggling and foul-mouthed Ace to the car.

The trip to wherever was the place they were going wasn't very long and Garp used it to explain what was this job. Apparently just another one of the Phoenix robberies. Ace obviously had heard about the guy, everybody on the Grand Line – except most definitively Luffy – had heard something about him. The guy was a very infamous thief that liked to send notes to his victims, police and sometimes newspapers warning about what would be stolen, together with the date and time of the robbery. And as chief of police, Garp had to always be there to try to stop it. 'Try' being the key word. Somehow, the Phoenix always manages to successfully steal whatever he's after and escape from the police or any superhero who happens to be at the place. Together with the rumours of him being associated to an old and supposedly retired very infamous supervillain made everything worse for the police's and heroes' pride.

Ace had to admit that he was kind of curious to see the guy. It wouldn't really be the first time of him accompanying Garp on a night of bird hunting, but still. For a grown man with glowing blue wings, the Phoenix was really hard to spot. The teenager had only seen him in newspapers pictures and those were always either too blurry to see anything or he looked more like a bird than a person on them. The kind of stuff Ace had heard the guy usually steals was also very interesting, for the most part, so the opportunity to take a look on them was a plus on most of bird watching nights.

Except for that one.

"A fish?" the teenager asked incredulous after Garp had finished giving the details of what he and his men had to protect. "One of the best thieves in the world decided to waste his night stealing a fish? Is the guy addicted to sushi or something like that?"

"Yes, a fish" Garp grunted the answer, evidently not happy about the fact he would spend his night protecting said fish. But the man still laughed at his grandson's remark about the criminal's diet "Bwahahaaha! That would be one expensive sushi! They say it's a very unique species, impossible to breed outside of nature." He explained, not sounding quite sure about this.

"It's still a fish..." the boy insisted. The 'expensive sushi' and 'very unique species' parts did catch his attention and might have made him a little curious about the animal, but he stubbornly didn't admit it. He was going to make sure to take a good look at that fish and, if possible, take a picture to show Luffy and Sabo. Maybe, just a big maybe, this would make them jealous for not coming and they wouldn't abandon him next time. Traitors.

The only big problem was that the owner of the fish wasn't letting anyone see it. They could get into the room the aquarium was. They could pretty much do any kind of mess they wanted in that room. But they couldn't move the curtains blocking their views of the fish. The time Ace and Garp got there, some policemen were trying to convince the owner that they couldn't protect something they couldn't see. And it was true. For all they knew, the aquarium could pretty much be already empty for hours. If it was there at all.

Sighing irritated, Ace didn't stay there to know how the argument would end. It was already pretty obvious the soon-to-be victim was a class A idiot and Gramps and his men would just have to suck it. It wouldn't be the first time, honestly. Most of the Phoenix's targets acted like that to protect their treasures, with the only exception of museums and others governmental institutions. The teenager gave his grandfather some lame excuse of keeping watch outside or whatever, while leaving the room, and proceed to do the exactly opposite and play addicting mobile games on the car.

Ace already knew the procedures in these cases. They would check the security systems, put the men in position inside and outside the house, confirm with snipers and other agents waiting in nearby buildings, try to contact a superhero, blablabla, and stay still watching any bird that could show up. Everything pretty boring in Ace's opinion. Sometimes it wasn't too bad and he had some interesting people to talk to. Like Smoker, aka the only hero who refused to wear tight lycra pants (a big plus in Ace's book). But apparently only the people who didn't know they had to protect a fish were there, so no one slightly interesting to hang out with.

Time passed and Ace grew tired of dumb games and decided to bug Sabo through messages, mostly asking about how his date was going. According to the blond it 'wasn't a date. But Ace didn't give him any mind and kept asking for stuff until he got at least the name of the girl. And, of course, also took the opportunity to keep remembering Sabo it was all his fault for making Ace wake up way too early to buy groceries. It was a lot more entertaining than his cellphone games, but not so much when Sabo decided to simply start to ignore him. After a barrage of messages without any replies, he decided to give up and get out of the car for some fresh air.

Then he felt someone watching him.

The feeling went away as fast as it came, making Ace question if it wasn't only his imagination. There were some policemen nearby, keeping guard around the house. None of them seemed to be giving a damn about Ace, with the exception of some paranoid ones worried about their chief's family safety. Still, Ace knew it wasn't any of them. Looking around, nothing really seemed out of the extraordinary. He decided to check his watch. Five minutes for the time given on Phoenix's warning note.

Ace thought he'd just caught a glimpse of blue on the corner of his eyes.

When the teenager turned around, it wasn't there anymore. He wasn't there anymore.

But... no. It couldn't be, could it?

Ace turned all his attention back to his clock, things suddenly a lot more interesting. If that really was the Phoenix, Ace was more than sure that he wanted to take a good look at his so called wings. Four minutes. He didn't know what it was, but something about the thief was making him excited. Three minutes. It was like a premonition. Ace got a strong feeling something interesting was going to happen. Two minutes. It had been only a fast glimpse, but he felt his fire reacting to it. One minute. Ace looked up to the mansion in front of him.

Exactly sixty seconds later, he could hear the place's alarms and a lot of yelling and shooting coming from inside. The only sound discernible between the others being 'the fish is gone'. Ace couldn't even start to imagine how the Phoenix managed to enter the building and go through all the security inside in just five minutes, but he did it. And he decided to escape in a very hollywood-esque way by jumping out of the window, right in front of the stunned boy.

He was a man, alright. With a stupid bird mask, amazing abs on display for anyone to see and big fiery blue wings in the place of arms. Ace really had to fight back his instincts in order to not simply go there and touch those wings with his own fire. A bunch of policemen discovering about his own powers and starting rumours that he had anything to do with the thief certainly wasn't something he needed right now. And it wasn't like he'd even have the time to get near the Phoenix, the way he was moving to skilfully dodge everybody that tried to go after him. Plus, some of the most coward men decided to crawl in his direction so they could 'protect the civilians'.

In any other situation, Ace would had laughed extremely hard of the very unmanly sounds they made when the Phoenix went in their direction. Right now, he was more preoccupied with other things, like the Phoenix flying in their direction. Ace didn't need to move out of the way and he wasn't even sure if he needed to. For a second, the man was right in front of him. He felt the fiery wings brushing slightly against his skin, and they weren't hot like his own flames (again not a good idea to let them out). But it wasn't what caught most of his attention. What caught his attention was that the guy was apparently looking direct at him – hard to be sure with that mask – and he was smirking.

The bastard was showing off.

This is it. Hope you enjoyed~